One of the titles of the many books I’ve threatened to write over the years but likely never will, is this: How MBAs destroyed our lives, the world and every thing in it. Granted, it’s a working title.

My dad is an MBA, so I don’t want to come across as too critical, but my basic opinion is that pretty much all MBAs are soulless lizard people who’d sell the family dog if the price were right. By that, of course, I mean they are lovely folks who are far too busy improving our lives on a daily basis manipulating stock markets and mortgage rates and destabilizing the economies of small, developing nations to either retain lawyers and/or write

blistering letters to the editor.

According to a short history of the MBA degree prepared by Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (in the country of the United States, they really should add for total clarity), the MBA is, with one exception, a 20th-century phenomenon, like genocide or telemarketing.

Harvard business school was launched in 1909 while the first MBA program in Canada, at the University of Western Ontario, didn’t start churning out glorified bookkeepers until 1950. In the U.S. alone, 100,000 new MBA hatchlings emerge from their eggs at university breeding facilities each year — thousands more in Canada — so, you know, hide the silverware.

Don’t believe MBAs aren’t a little evil? Check out the top-10 U.S. employers of Masters of Business Administration.

1) Google, which tracks our behaviour and spending habits and sells it to corporations — and sometimes to the CIA.

2) McKinsey & Company, a global management firm that claims to know everything about everything. Its home page right now brags that the company is “Reimagining India.” Not sure what the Indians think about that.

3) Bain and Company. Two words, Mitt and Romney.

4) Goldman Sachs. Remember that little financial event in 2008, when you couldn’t afford a Christmas turkey and had to settle for carved Spam? It wasn’t an accident. Goldman boss Lloyd Blankfein pocketed more than $100 million in the two years before the crash while his traders sold complex, mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting client suckers that the Wall Street bank knew were bogus.

5) Apple … hmm, I’m cuckoo for their wicked products, but only a wicked company full of MBAs could figure out how to build a near monopoly selling every song in the world for top dollar without providing album covers and paying the musicians peanuts.

The rest of the top-10 include the Boston Consulting Group (charges high fees to tell companies to kill peoples’ jobs), Walt Disney (freaky talking mouse and long history of union-busting), Nike (overpriced shoes made for peanuts in Third World sweatshops), JP Morgan (duh, it’s a bank …) and Johnson & Johnson (carcinogens in the baby powder.)

See what I mean?

One of the worst things MBAs have inflicted on the world is their toadying devotion to bottom-line thinking. Like most people, I believe in free enterprise, but I also believe in the Buddhist concept of the Middle Way or Middle Path, the philosophy that taking extreme position on any issue leads to trouble.

Bottom-line thinking is extremist. It leads to raw-log exports, taking shortcuts on health and safety and environmental standards and moving once good-paying manufacturing jobs to slave-wage regimes. It leads to CEOs getting obscenely high compensation — tens of millions of dollars a year — while workers get less or are let go. It leads to companies ruining themselves to boost their short-term share prices at the expense of long-term investment and planning.

If there’s one group that can be blamed for the destruction of the middle class in North America it’s the roaming hordes of MBAs and their bottom-line thinking. Yeah, we may have cheaper appliances, but what’s the point if no one can afford them or if communities become ghost towns due to lack of employment?

When this happens in the private sector it’s bad enough. At least consumers can demand change (toxins in plastic milk bottles) or refuse to buy crappy goods from offshore. Instead of that $10 T-shirt from Bangladesh in the big-chain store, you can buy an interesting handmade $25 shirt from a local artisan.

But I really gnash my teeth when I see governments using bottom-line thinking to treat people not as citizens, but as clients. Examples include things like bridge tolls, fees for service (usually for reduced service) or, as with B.C. Hydro or B.C. Ferries, pretending that they are just companies and not public utilities.

Now there is a push to impose a road tax in Vancouver, which is MBA thinking of the worst kind. First of all, taxpayers already paid for those roads. They own the roads. Second, it’s simply wrong for government through fees to constantly keep creating two levels of service for citizens.

It’s fine for the private sector to put a high price on a Mercedes so only the rich can drive one; it’s totally wrong for government to effectively say that only people who can afford a Mercedes get to drive on public roads. Like I said, it’s MBA thinking — and it’s evil.

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